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Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Just over a week ago I ran my first marathon. It was an
unseasonably hot and humid day and a very challenging course – especially for a
first time marathoner like me. It is uncertain ifdelirium drove me to crazy thoughts, or if
the extreme effort gave me incredible clarity of mind such that I was
temporarily transformed into a great philosopher contemplating the similarities
between endurance events and project management. Either way, I think I had some
pretty good ideas while I was out there so, crazy or not, I am going to share
them with the world!

My first musings on management started at about mile 9. I
had just finished about 3 miles of uphill climb, the last mile of which was
very steep and purported to be the toughest part of the course. It was very
tough but it was also one of the most enjoyable parts of the run for me. I
think it was the feeling of putting in so much effort, knowing that I had to
keep going no matter how tough the challenge, and having faith that all the planning
and training would pay off – I was ready for this! Once I crested the hill, I
still had a lot of hard work to do but I knew that after that hill, I could handle
almost anything. At the top of the hill, I started to think about how much endurance
you need to get through a marathon and how it is similar to getting through a
tough project. Management endurance is not physical, of course, it is mental.
However, in my opinion, only about half of the endurance needed for a marathon
is physical – the other half is mental endurance. This is what gives you the
will to keep going when your body wants to give up. It keeps you smiling and
feeling energized when your body is not feeling quite so happy with you and your
energy levels feel depleted. It is this same mental endurance that gets project
managers through tough projects and helps them keep themselves and their teams
motivated and focused on the end result even when the going gets tough.

Training for a marathon takes a consistent effort. You start
with a crazy idea that you want to run a marathon. That evolves into a plan
which maps out what you need to do and when. Just as with a project, you have a
clearly defined start and finish date. You identify milestones along the way.
These can be shorter distance races, speed checkpoints, or they can be
psychologically or physically challenging distances, like your first 20+ miler.
Your marathon plan will require a budget that includes the expenses to train
and participate in the race or races you have chosen. In addition to your
budget you will have a procurement plan for the things you need to purchase.
These include things like race registration, travel and accommodation, and purchasing
the items you need for training and race day. These items will include running
shoes, clothing, and nutritional items. These purchases are not haphazard –
they need to be budgeted for and purchased at the right time. Part of the plan
is to test a few things to see what works best. This is like race prototyping. You
may test which shoes work best and you have to make sure you have enough pairs
of shoes so you are not left with a worn out pair by race day. You must not
wear brand new shoes on race day so you have to work backwards from your finish
date to make sure you have time to do some long miles in the shoes you will
race in. You test nutrition products and different clothing items. You may also
test race strategies or work on running form.

The effort to complete a marathon does not start when you
cross the start line and finish when you cross the finish line. It starts the
day you start thinking about running a race and deciding what race you want to
train for. It continues through making the final decision, creating your
training program (schedule) and continues through every single run, every
success, every setback and every adjustment to the plan. Sometimes things
happen that require a change to a project. It could be created by business
needs, technical issues or staffing problems. Your project’s scope may change,
you may need to remove functionality or features or you may need to push out
the release date. The same things can happen with marathon training. The first
time I was training for a marathon I got pneumonia about half way through the
program which put me out of action for 10 weeks. I had to decrease the scope of
my training plan and switch to the half marathon race instead as I didn’t have
enough time to catch up on missed training before the event. I then had to
create a new plan to train for another full marathon. I have worked on
technical projects that experienced similar problems and were resolved in a
similar way. We decreased the scope of the current project, released the
project in phases, or pushed out the end date.

By the time I reached mile 16 of my marathon, just about every
part of my body was hurting. With 10 more miles to go I couldn’t risk letting
myself think about how much pain my leg muscles were experiencing so there was
nothing for it but to keep philosophizing about how what I was doing was like
managing a project. While mile 16 and beyond were certainly more painful than
most of the projects I have managed, I can recall one or two projects with some
rather excruciating moments!

So I had philosophized my way through concept, project
proposal, budgeting, scheduling and some of the implementation in my parallel
project management/marathon running imaginary world. What was I missing? Oh
yes, teamwork, communication, integration, deployment and post-deployment. By
now I was convinced that I was definitely onto something and I had 10 more
miles to get it all figured out in my head. I started with teamwork. Teamwork
comes from training with others. Getting up at 5am on Saturday mornings and
doing those long miles together. Sometimes you run together and sometimes you
don’t but you always have breakfast together afterwards so you can talk about
your run. If it is a challenging day – a bad run day – words of encouragement and
camaraderie can go a long way to making you feel much better.

What about communication? This is all the communication you
do with running partners or running friends generally. It also includes
blogging about long distance running and walking, social media updates and
phone calls to family, friends, and mentors about progress. Non-running friends
may well get tired of the updates (just like project stakeholders do when we
over-communicate with them) so it is a learning experience to curb your
enthusiasm and be selective in communications. Not everyone is as excited about
the details of every single run! Communication also includes, reading and
listening to others, getting advice from the experts or from more experienced
athletes. These communications enable you to learn from others’ challenges and
successes.

Integration and testing really comes into play when you run
shorter distance races to test your race strategies, and during your milestone
training runs where you do everything exactly as you would on race day. These
are like dress rehearsal runs. You wear exactly what you will wear on race day.
You eat the same thing for breakfast; consume the same nutrition and sports
drinks that you will on race day. You try to emulate what will happen on race
day as closely as possible. The only differences are that you will be running a
little bit shorter distance and at a slower pace than you will on the actual
day. You are testing that everything will go smoothly but you don’t want to run
your race before race day or you will be too worn out to do it! There should be
no surprises on race day just like there should be no surprises on product
launch day. Nothing that is new and untested is allowed. Every single thing has
been tested individually and together – for your marathon and for your product!

Deployment, as with many projects, is a very small part of
the plan. For a race – it takes a few hours. For a technology project it often
takes a similar amount of time. Preparing for deployment usually takes more
time than the actual deployment itself. This includes such things as travelling
to the race site; checking into your hotel (if applicable); visiting the race
expo to pick up your race packet and laying out your clothes ready for the next
day. You try to get a good night’s sleep so you are prepared for anything on
race day.

Post-deployment tasks are as important in marathon running
as in technical projects. After the race there is a checklist of things you
must do. You need to get your photo taken, receive your medal, replenish some
fluids and eat, eat and eat some more! You need to check to make sure everything
is still working and that you don’t need medical attention. It is advisable to
move more slowly, do some light stretching, and maybe take a nap. After you are
rested and sure that everything is OK, it is time to celebrate but you might be
too tired to celebrate too heartily so planning another celebration in a week
or two when you feel more rested and calm is a good idea! Recovery time is an
important part of post-deployment for racing. Your body is worn out and needs
time to rest and recuperate. Just as you will keep an eye on your product after
deployment and possibly fix a few bugs – you have to do the same with your
post-marathon body for a week or two. Then it is time to choose another project
(or race) and start the process all over again!

Just because managing projects is hard it doesn’t mean it
cannot be fun and hugely rewarding. Just like marathons, if it were easy then
everyone would be doing it. It takes endurance, attitude and oodles of
enthusiasm to complete projects and marathons without going completely insane.
When you cross that finish line, you know for sure that it has all been worth
it and that the journey was as important as the destination.

Endurance events and project management have a lot in
common. I vote that project managers should get a medal for every project they
finish in the allotted time. It is an endurance event after all, and it is only
fair!